The field of the invention pertains to the electronic timing of a plurality of events in a cyclic system and, in particular, to the creation of a plurality of timing signals synchronous with an external reciprocating signal.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,241,295 discloses a digital lighting control system comprising, in particular, a computer, direct memory access means and a trigger pulse generator. In the trigger pulse generator is a comparator which accepts data from an internal memory and a sequential address counter. The comparator will only output a signal to the decoder and in turn to the power circuit for the lamps when both the memory signal and the counter signal are equal.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,448,338 discloses a stage lighting system comprising a memory store in digital form for dimmer settings corresponding to particular stage lighting cues for stage lighting effects. Control means are included for selectively modifying the dimmer signals as desired and a master fader control subject to the modified dimmer signals stored in memory.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,579,030 discloses further improvements to the lighting system disclosed in the above patent. Specifically, backing memory storage elements for the "active" memory elements are disclosed along with circuitry for recording and retrieving data in the backup storage.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,898,643 discloses a stage lighting system having a data processor central to a plurality input peripherals and an output interface to the dimmers for the lighting banks.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,287,468 discloses the control of power dissipation in a stage lighting system by eliminating selected half cycles applied to the load. The device relies upon zero crossing switching.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,511,824 discloses an electronic lamp dimmer employing a parallel access memory with simultaneous access to a large number of presets but avoids application of a heavy workload on a serial processor.